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Sony says they plan to spend excess operating cash on investments in the entertainment space

John Wick

Member
Basically what you are trying to imply is that he who makes the road owns the automakers. When really the only thing that happens is that he gets $ through tax.

With so many competing cloud companies, the only thing happening for content creators is choice and a better price.

You are looking at it from a monopolist standpoint, where a company with a cloud infrastructure will effectively cut out everyone else when in fact what they want is everyone else to rent it.

Who provides the infrastructure for Netflix, the biggest in the world? Amazon. Yet in this interpretation of yours, Amazon should be cutting Netflix off and make it exclusive to their streaming service and force Netflix to negotiate with them towards putting Netflix content on Prime. But that’s not what happens, and Disney is also using Amazon.

You are looking at the world upside down.
It makes sense for Sony to be on the online/streaming entertainment business. They have movie studios with a massive back catalogue and series as well. They're also a music publisher and games as well. I'm surprised they haven't done their own streaming services combining all these elements. Huge potential if they get it right. If they expand their Anime business they could add that too
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
It makes sense for Sony to be on the online/streaming entertainment business. They have movie studios with a massive back catalogue and series as well. They're also a music publisher and games as well. I'm surprised they haven't done their own streaming services combining all these elements. Huge potential if they get it right. If they expand their Anime business they could add that too

It doesn’t make sense for them to go into the infrastructure business. Content has become a driving motto in the past few years at Sony, and maybe in the future when all its divisions work more in tandem it will make sense to have a Prime like service. Their entertainment division is growing, and it might just be a matter of time, but it’s not clear ATM how they would deliver on that vision in the short term.

Personally I think they should be more aggressive in either growing their PlayStation studios from inside out or acquiring legacy IP to reduce risk of being overrun in the future by big names.
 
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EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Sony couldn’t pull off the TV streaming thing (vue) and I have zero interest in these deals. If you want to annihilate M$ do what you just did last gen.
 
Couldn't their rampant consolidation of Western anime & manga distributors (at least in America and parts of Europe) be considered a monopoly pretty soon if not already?
 
Sony should buy arcsys so weebs can cream their pants. Sony hopefully can give them enough of a budget to fix the lack of animation.
 

Dabaus

Banned
Capcom would cover all bases. Ips for gaming, movies, anime, and whatever else.

Same with sqaure enix but they have a little more baggage and are more expensive.

Realistically it will probably be smaller studios that works for them and a consolidation of movie, music, and anime IP.
 

yurinka

Member
If I was them I'd buy Kadowaka (including From Software), Bluepoint, Kojipro, Housemarque, Remedy and Quantic Dream.

Other than these teams, I wouldn't buy anything and instead I'd invest on growing the workforce of their already existing development studios in order to have a 2nd or 3rd track team inside the studio and/or having a bigger headcount per game, with the goal of being able to get more games from each internal studio every generation.

They also have an insane portfolio of movies, tv shows and anime. I think they should turn Crunchyroll into the ultimate anime streaming service putting all their related content there and merging it with other related services they may have (as I remember they had at least other one), and to make sure they milk better their movies and tv shows in the other services like Netflix, HBO, Prime Video, etc. Or to make their own Disney Plus merging all their movies, tv series and anime, and related video streaming services they own, into a single service to compete against the other ones and to get a bigger revenue share of streaming their content.

For instance, they might not want to buy out Sega but they can make a contract to get Yakuza and Persona exclusive for the longterm... maybe longer than 20 years if they wanted. Just throw as many wrenches in the works as possible.
Retrogaming and game subscription markets are growing.

So if they buy Sega and sell or close the Pachinko part, they could have in addition to their currently popular IPs a ton of classic ones from Sega and Sony consoles plus arcade, which could work well for exclusive PS Now streaming and download content, plus maybe some compilations, remakes or reboots.

Same goes for Microsoft, Nintendo, Tencent, Amazon or Google. Yes, they can sign exclusivity deals. But this would end if somebody else buy them. Microsoft and Tencent have been pretty agressive recently buying companies, Amazon and Google need catalog to grow their streaming services and Nintendo well, who knows. It would be a great fit for Nintendo but in many areas always have been behind the other ones and choosing their own (successful) path, as can be now with game subscriptions or trophies to name a couple of them.
 
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If you want to annihilate M$ do what you just did last gen.

You know, they could do all this things including an expansion of the entertainment business that caters to the casual, the 2 billion as MS would put it, and still play their cards right in the gaming business.

These are not mutually inclusive. By your logic, Sony should not challenge Tesla with the Vision S.


I don't want Sony to be run by like a boring company doing only things that are safe. I want Sony to make Vision S a reality.


I also want Sony to challenge Netflix and Disney+ with a unique streaming service that only a company like Sony could pull off.
 
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RoadHazard

Gold Member
All of this drama would be over if Sony would just buy Xbox from Microsoft.

(I don't actually want this to happen. Competition is good.)
 
More games and less anime please

I would buy Blupoint, Remedy, Team Kojima, From Software, and Konami IP if I were them and they were on the table to buy

they don’t need a huge publisher, just selectively intelligent purchases
Only one I'd personally want from that list is Bluepoint.
 
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Bryank75

Banned
If I was them I'd buy Kadowaka (including From Software), Bluepoint, Kojipro, Housemarque, Remedy and Quantic Dream.

Other than these teams, I wouldn't buy anything and instead I'd invest on growing the workforce of their already existing development studios in order to have a 2nd or 3rd track team inside the studio and/or having a bigger headcount per game, with the goal of being able to get more games from each internal studio every generation.

They also have an insane portfolio of movies, tv shows and anime. I think they should turn Crunchyroll into the ultimate anime streaming service putting all their related content there and merging it with other related services they may have (as I remember they had at least other one), and to make sure they milk better their movies and tv shows in the other services like Netflix, HBO, Prime Video, etc. Or to make their own Disney Plus merging all their movies, tv series and anime, and related video streaming services they own, into a single service to compete against the other ones and to get a bigger revenue share of streaming their content.


Retrogaming and game subscription markets are growing.

So if they buy Sega and sell or close the Pachinko part, they could have in addition to their currently popular IPs a ton of classic ones from Sega and Sony consoles plus arcade, which could work well for exclusive PS Now streaming and download content, plus maybe some compilations, remakes or reboots.

Same goes for Microsoft, Nintendo, Tencent, Amazon or Google. Yes, they can sign exclusivity deals. But this would end if somebody else buy them. Microsoft and Tencent have been pretty agressive recently buying companies, Amazon and Google need catalog to grow their streaming services and Nintendo well, who knows. It would be a great fit for Nintendo but in many areas always have been behind the other ones and choosing their own (successful) path, as can be now with game subscriptions or trophies to name a couple of them.
If a contract is signed to bring games exclusively to a console, they must be honored by the company if acquired. That's why Death Loop and Ghostwire Tokyo are still 1 year exclusive to PS5.

I'm saying Sony could sign a 20 year exclusivity deal for those 2 franchises, basically castrating any acquisition from another company.
 

GymWolf

Member
Good, now that you have more money you can cut that crossgen crap for ps5 games and be satisfied with only ps5 users money 🕺
 

yurinka

Member
If a contract is signed to bring games exclusively to a console, they must be honored by the company if acquired. That's why Death Loop and Ghostwire Tokyo are still 1 year exclusive to PS5.

I'm saying Sony could sign a 20 year exclusivity deal for those 2 franchises, basically castrating any acquisition from another company.
Yes, but the thing is that Kadokawa depend on each other in many areas. In terms of anime Sony needs Kadokawa's content and Kadokawa needs Sony's streaming platforms. In games Sony may want From Software games and Japan market focused games, and Kadokawa needs Sony for the Japanese home console market and would be a great partner to grow outside Japan in terms of games because not only they are the market leader worldwide in consoles, but also a very successful and popular game publisher and out of all the big publishers, they are the company more involved into anime so would be more careful and would understand them better than the other ones.

Regarding consoles and anime Sony is the best partner for Kadokawa, and their relationship is a win/win in both games and anime. So I think if Kadokawa wants or needs to sell the company, they will choose Sony. And since they benefit from each other in several ways, I think they may agree multiple exclusivities in terms of anime and videogames even without paying anything.
 

Bryank75

Banned
Yes, but the thing is that Kadokawa depend on each other in many areas. In terms of anime Sony needs Kadokawa's content and Kadokawa needs Sony's streaming platforms. In games Sony may want From Software games and Japan market focused games, and Kadokawa needs Sony for the Japanese home console market and would be a great partner to grow outside Japan in terms of games because not only they are the market leader worldwide in consoles, but also a very successful and popular game publisher and out of all the big publishers, they are the company more involved into anime so would be more careful and would understand them better than the other ones.

Regarding consoles and anime Sony is the best partner for Kadokawa, and their relationship is a win/win in both games and anime. So I think if Kadokawa wants or needs to sell the company, they will choose Sony. And since they benefit from each other in several ways, I think they may agree multiple exclusivities in terms of anime and videogames even without paying anything.
I'd say Capcom fit in there too and Square but buying both would be such a stretch.

Street Fighter just works so well in anime, MH and RE can work well in that style too and of course several Square IP's.
 

yurinka

Member
I'd say Capcom fit in there too and Square but buying both would be such a stretch.

Street Fighter just works so well in anime, MH and RE can work well in that style too and of course several Square IP's.
Sure, and since many years ago Capcom always wanted to bring their IPs to everywhere they can: real action movies, anime/cartoons, comics/mangas... whatever. As fan of both if someone has to buy Capcom I'd prefer to be Sony, but not sure if Sony would be interested on such big acquisitions and if they would want to sell since they are doing great.

Btw, Sony was involved in the production of the SF2 anime movie, Van Damme's SF movie, RE movies, MH movies or FF Spirits Within.
 
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Ar¢tos

Member
What Playstation boss sees when he enters meetings with other Sony departments bosses:
1280px-Carrion_Crow_Nest_16-05-10_%284612735510%29.jpg
 

jakinov

Member
More games and less anime please

I would buy Blupoint, Remedy, Team Kojima, From Software, and Konami IP if I were them and they were on the table to buy

they don’t need a huge publisher, just selectively intelligent purchases
From the top, this probably won't happen. Those teams are already making games for them and some for others too. Spending a shit ton of money to convince them to sell and paying for some of them for their multi-platform price and then gutting their revenue is probably not going to pay off in the long run. Strategically, to ensure they don't lose market share? Sure. To grow it, probably not. They already doing so well these small but expensive benefits probably aren't going to make them richer. Unless they have bigger more ambitious plans with these companies with a lot of potential then sure as well.
Playstation continues to make all the money for Sony, and receive none of the budget for growth. Back to business as usual for Sony without Kaz steering the ship
The money goes towards everything, just because they aren't doing a lot of acquisitions for PlayStation doesn't mean they aren't spending money on growth at all. Also PlayStation is already growing and buying studios and making them exclusive isn't going to get you great profits. Help the platform a bit? Sure but they already have so much market share they don't need to spend loads of money to convince people to get a PlayStation by buying companies at high prices and crippling their revenue.

It makes sense for Sony to be on the online/streaming entertainment business. They have movie studios with a massive back catalogue and series as well. They're also a music publisher and games as well. I'm surprised they haven't done their own streaming services combining all these elements. Huge potential if they get it right. If they expand their Anime business they could add that too
They can sell all the content to all the other streaming services who will bid shit tons of money instead of going in and trying to competing with the other major distributors. The other companies have more reason to try and get into streaming as they are already massive distributors that got disrupted by streaming. With building a service, there's a lot more limits to how you can monetize on content and there's a lot more costs. With simply being a content creator, you get the opportunity to sell your content on a per-title basis. For example, Netflix paying Sony over $500M for temporary exclusive streaming rights for Seinfeld. Being your own distributor you have a finite budget and a much smaller theoretical limit to how much money you can ever make (i.e.. max subscribers x price - operating costs). With being a content creator, assuming that you can keep creating valuable content, you can sell to the other 20 distributors and take a large portion of their revenue. We'd need a crystal ball to see what would be more fruitful but what Sony is doing right now is arguably safer and still very lucrative and can get even more lucrative in the future when they produce more content.
 

Bryank75

Banned
From the top, this probably won't happen. Those teams are already making games for them and some for others too. Spending a shit ton of money to convince them to sell and paying for some of them for their multi-platform price and then gutting their revenue is probably not going to pay off in the long run. Strategically, to ensure they don't lose market share? Sure. To grow it, probably not. They already doing so well these small but expensive benefits probably aren't going to make them richer. Unless they have bigger more ambitious plans with these companies with a lot of potential then sure as well.

The money goes towards everything, just because they aren't doing a lot of acquisitions for PlayStation doesn't mean they aren't spending money on growth at all. Also PlayStation is already growing and buying studios and making them exclusive isn't going to get you great profits. Help the platform a bit? Sure but they already have so much market share they don't need to spend loads of money to convince people to get a PlayStation by buying companies at high prices and crippling their revenue.


They can sell all the content to all the other streaming services who will bid shit tons of money instead of going in and trying to competing with the other major distributors. The other companies have more reason to try and get into streaming as they are already massive distributors that got disrupted by streaming. With building a service, there's a lot more limits to how you can monetize on content and there's a lot more costs. With simply being a content creator, you get the opportunity to sell your content on a per-title basis. For example, Netflix paying Sony over $500M for temporary exclusive streaming rights for Seinfeld. Being your own distributor you have a finite budget and a much smaller theoretical limit to how much money you can ever make (i.e.. max subscribers x price - operating costs). With being a content creator, assuming that you can keep creating valuable content, you can sell to the other 20 distributors and take a large portion of their revenue. We'd need a crystal ball to see what would be more fruitful but what Sony is doing right now is arguably safer and still very lucrative and can get even more lucrative in the future when they produce more content.
I don't think anyone here is expecting PlayStation to go out and buy out..... say Capcom and make them exclusive. But they could buy a chunk of stock to protect them from other companies or write up long term contracts for certain franchises that are key to PlayStations identity and as poison pills to any potential acquisitions.

Now on the PS Studios lineup.... there are 13 studios and several are not producing AAA or even mass market games. Mm for instance, London hasn't done anything in ages and Sad Diego is now working on a multiplatform franchise. While PS has lost a lot of second party support including Ueda, Supermassive, Quantic Dream and several others.

I think they could at the very least add 2 high quality, IP rich studios.... an IOI or Remedy or a MiHoYo or something interesting.

Just something to excite the userbase and get them hyped about the future. Some more Marvel or Disney IP stuff would be awesome too.
 
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jakinov

Member
I don't think anyone here is expecting PlayStation to go out and buy out..... say Capcom and make them exclusive. But they could buy a chunk of stock to protect them from other companies or write up long term contracts for certain franchises that are key to PlayStations identity and as poison pills to any potential acquisitions.

Now on the PS Studios lineup.... there are 13 studios and several are not producing AAA or even mass market games. Mm for instance, London hasn't done anything in ages and Sad Diego is now working on a multiplatform franchise. While PS has lost a lot of second party support including Ueda, Supermassive, Quantic Dream and several others.

I think they could at the very least add 2 high quality, IP rich studios.... an IOI or Remedy or a MiHoYo or something interesting.
I would only agree, if Xbox actually starts to gain ground on PlayStation. Otherwise, if Sony still dominates, they might not get their money back or at least could have made a lot more money big picture investing somewhere else. With Xbox's track record and them continuing to make mistakes, I don't think PlayStation should be too concerned yet.
 

demonstr8

Member
Should’ve invested in either Netflix, or Spotify before they became mega huge. Would’ve given them a really broad portfolio combined with their games and movies assets.
They literally did - you should've done more research before making an ignorant post and looking silly.

 

Bryank75

Banned
I would only agree, if Xbox actually starts to gain ground on PlayStation. Otherwise, if Sony still dominates, they might not get their money back or at least could have made a lot more money big picture investing somewhere else. With Xbox's track record and them continuing to make mistakes, I don't think PlayStation should be too concerned yet.
The only place Xbox could ever gain ground is the US and even that seems very doubtful TBH, at the same time I am very worried about the PS Studios not being pushed or getting stale in customers perceptions.

There is also the worry that without any protections in place 3rd party support will be eroded over time.
 

AmuroChan

Member
im not too sure about their spendings on anime though...its frickin anime.
otherwise it's good their shares keep climbing, they are pretty well value and have space to go up further

It's the IPs that they want. Fate/Grand Order on mobile has grossed over $4 Billion for Sony. Anime and mobile Gacha games go hand in hand.
 

12Dannu123

Member
Challenge them in terms of what?

Amazon and Google's efforts in gaming have been a disaster and Xbox despite 20 years in the game is still way behind in most metrics.

Sony is no slouch in economic terms anymore, they have plenty of assets and very strong relationships as well as the advantage of many developers and publishers coming from their home territory in Japan. We saw just today that they have formed an alliance with Kadokawa and Cygames parent company.

I imagine there will be other deals we will learn of.

For instance, they might not want to buy out Sega but they can make a contract to get Yakuza and Persona exclusive for the longterm... maybe longer than 20 years if they wanted. Just throw as many wrenches in the works as possible.

Acquisitions that other companies are pursuing can easily be exploited and leave the buying party heavily out of pocket.

Why would any publisher sign a long term exclusive partnership? The acquirer has the power to sever the partnership.
 

Bryank75

Banned
Why would any publisher sign a long term exclusive partnership? The acquirer has the power to sever the partnership.
A legal deal... no they don't.

They'd receive a letter from legal council right after and the damages would be a lot.
 
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yurinka

Member
I’d be keeping a good eye on Ember Labs too, they might be huge up and comers.
Let's see, first they need to prove they know how to make videogames. They come from animation, so yes they know how to do CG trailers and bullshots.

Now they have to release the game, we have to see real gameplay running on a real console, and see if in addition of being beautiful (if it's the case, as it seems until now) it's also a good game.
 

bitbydeath

Member
Let's see, first they need to prove they know how to make videogames. They come from animation, so yes they know how to do CG trailers and bullshots.

Now they have to release the game, we have to see real gameplay running on a real console, and see if in addition of being beautiful (if it's the case, as it seems until now) it's also a good game.
We have seen gameplay running on the PS5 but I agree we should wait to see the final product (hence the keep an eye on comment)


p.gif



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Eanox

Member
https://www.boxofficepro.com/demon-...mes-highest-grossing-movie-of-all-time-japan/
It made $313M USD in Japan alone.

No wonder they want anime to be the 4th pillar.
 
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longdi

Banned
It's the IPs that they want. Fate/Grand Order on mobile has grossed over $4 Billion for Sony. Anime and mobile Gacha games go hand in hand.
that's my concern, they just threw those billions out to buy some anime. not sure if you need an anime network to earn from gacha
 
From the top, this probably won't happen. Those teams are already making games for them and some for others too. Spending a shit ton of money to convince them to sell and paying for some of them for their multi-platform price and then gutting their revenue is probably not going to pay off in the long run. Strategically, to ensure they don't lose market share? Sure. To grow it, probably not. They already doing so well these small but expensive benefits probably aren't going to make them richer. Unless they have bigger more ambitious plans with these companies with a lot of potential then sure as well.

The money goes towards everything, just because they aren't doing a lot of acquisitions for PlayStation doesn't mean they aren't spending money on growth at all. Also PlayStation is already growing and buying studios and making them exclusive isn't going to get you great profits. Help the platform a bit? Sure but they already have so much market share they don't need to spend loads of money to convince people to get a PlayStation by buying companies at high prices and crippling their revenue.


They can sell all the content to all the other streaming services who will bid shit tons of money instead of going in and trying to competing with the other major distributors. The other companies have more reason to try and get into streaming as they are already massive distributors that got disrupted by streaming. With building a service, there's a lot more limits to how you can monetize on content and there's a lot more costs. With simply being a content creator, you get the opportunity to sell your content on a per-title basis. For example, Netflix paying Sony over $500M for temporary exclusive streaming rights for Seinfeld. Being your own distributor you have a finite budget and a much smaller theoretical limit to how much money you can ever make (i.e.. max subscribers x price - operating costs). With being a content creator, assuming that you can keep creating valuable content, you can sell to the other 20 distributors and take a large portion of their revenue. We'd need a crystal ball to see what would be more fruitful but what Sony is doing right now is arguably safer and still very lucrative and can get even more lucrative in the future when they produce more content.

I think this viewpoint is a bit short sighted.

Sony has a tremendous first party stable, but games still progressively take longer to produce. Organic growth is also a much slower process, because you have to hire, you have to devote resource leads away from projects and into mentoring new studio groups.

I am not really talking about "shitloads" of money like Microsoft did with the Bethesda purchase. Remedy, Bluepoint, and Team Kojima could all be purchased for less than $500 million, more than likely. From Software would be more expensive, probably nearing a billion or more.

If Sony wakes up one day and realizes Microsoft's studio purchases panned out and they are now releasing 1-2 AAA games per quarter on GamePass, while Sony has half that amount NOT on a GamePass equivalent, the mindshare could shift. Sony is going to need to continuously show that they are the best in the industry, and if streaming eventually takes off with gaming they will need all the studios they can realistically manage.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Challenge them in terms of what?

Amazon and Google's efforts in gaming have been a disaster and Xbox despite 20 years in the game is still way behind in most metrics.

Sony is no slouch in economic terms anymore, they have plenty of assets and very strong relationships as well as the advantage of many developers and publishers coming from their home territory in Japan. We saw just today that they have formed an alliance with Kadokawa and Cygames parent company.

I imagine there will be other deals we will learn of.

For instance, they might not want to buy out Sega but they can make a contract to get Yakuza and Persona exclusive for the longterm... maybe longer than 20 years if they wanted. Just throw as many wrenches in the works as possible.

Acquisitions that other companies are pursuing can easily be exploited and leave the buying party heavily out of pocket.

I think the key thing is to bear in mind is that in real-world terms infrastructure just means distribution channel. Who actually owns the datacentres is irrelevent to consumers, its how that infrastructure is presented and what products and services it offers individually and as bundles.

So you sign up for Prime shipping on Amazon, they toss in Prime Music and Video for free. And while they are at it they present a range of other subscription service some of which are offered by third-parties, but plenty of them they own also. Its about locking people into their ecosystem.

If you aren't part of such conglomerates, where do you stand? Are you a featured product, or just one amongst many? Big difference because if you're "inside" you are going to get a lot more visibility and as a result more income. Oh, and of course the infrastructure holder can always elect not to allow you in anyway if they think its in their interests, like what Apple did to MS over XCloud.

Point being that just because you have a platform agnostic portal, it doesn't follow that you will be able to install that anywhere. Apple denies MS a kiosk app, and sidelines it onto a web-page suppressing take-up. The only way around this really is to offer a service with so much demand that not carrying it is worse for business than being denied a satisfactory cut of the revenue.

That's the subtle subtext of "Netflix for gaming". A service too big to ignore regardless of who's platform is hosting it and what competing services they offer.
 

jakinov

Member
I think this viewpoint is a bit short sighted.

Sony has a tremendous first party stable, but games still progressively take longer to produce. Organic growth is also a much slower process, because you have to hire, you have to devote resource leads away from projects and into mentoring new studio groups.

I am not really talking about "shitloads" of money like Microsoft did with the Bethesda purchase. Remedy, Bluepoint, and Team Kojima could all be purchased for less than $500 million, more than likely. From Software would be more expensive, probably nearing a billion or more.

If Sony wakes up one day and realizes Microsoft's studio purchases panned out and they are now releasing 1-2 AAA games per quarter on GamePass, while Sony has half that amount NOT on a GamePass equivalent, the mindshare could shift. Sony is going to need to continuously show that they are the best in the industry, and if streaming eventually takes off with gaming they will need all the studios they can realistically manage.
I'm not saying Sony shouldn't acquire studios. But they aren't in a position that they need to grow that fast and not all acquisitions will pay off especially when you force them to cut their revenue as soon as you buy them. Games take longer they release a bit later so what? It's nice to invest in being a bigger publisher/developer but it's not a lucrative as being a publisher/developer for multiple platforms. The main advantage of their exclusive is that they can be loss leaders(not that they are or that they aim for them to be) because the bread and butter is in selling ALL games and services for everybody else as a platform owner. Will they invest in growing the publishing business? Most likely, But if they are already far ahead of the competition and are in a good position already, they don't need to invest a shit ton now. They can invest in something with more growth potential and use the "dividends" from that to invest back more heavily in gaming if they ever need to in the future. And again a lot of these companies are already providing value to Sony without needing to own them.

Even $500 million dollars is a shit load and not even enough to buy Remedy. If you wanted to buy Remedy today you'd be paying at least $540 million USD and, you'd have to pay higher than that if the original founders still own controlling interest (which they likely do) as the reason they have those shares is because they expect the company to be worth more. It's hard to price Kojima Productions and Bluepoint but Kojima is going to want a lot of money in order for him to give up and Bluepoint has a better track record than companies who worked on IPs they don't own that have sold for over $150 million.

Sony can be competitive in more ways than just owning more studios (and again they will likely own more studios just doesn't need to be that fast). They can still offer a gamepass alternative. They can continue to innovate in things such as 3D Audio, VR, computer engineering (SSD, customized hardware), controller, OS, etc. They can form new marketing partnerships. Also PC gaming is getting more popular, so more (than before) people can play those 1-2 games/quarter on PC. People are seemingly owning more consoles than ever so even if more people get Xboxes; I would argue that with long console generations and the consoles becoming so different in what games you can buy, it becomes less of a zero sum game in owning multiple.

Also, not everyone bases their decision to buy consoles on exclusives. There are lots of people that just buy consoles because of reasons such as brand loyalty, friends, or promotion. If every console purchase was based on an exclusive game you'd have to assume that people only ever bought 1. PlayStation has so much brand loyalty in the USA and especially outside the US. There are going to be people buying PlayStations regardless of what the other side has as long as there's value. Not everyone is going to be interested in every game Microsoft pumps out and Sony has the advantage of already having people into their ecosystem. Whether is into the IP they own, because they already invested hundreds or thousands in building their digital libraries, want enhanced versions of old games, used to the controllers, made friends, collected trophies or whatever.

Sony will always invest money in PlayStation but Sony at the top are interested in making big picture investments with the extra money that leads to noticeably growth to the bottom line.
 

Perrott

Gold Member
If SIE were to go on an acquisition spree, I hope that they acquire the following studios:
  • Arrowhead Game Studios
  • Bluepoint Games
  • Housemarque
Quantic Dream, Supermassive, Remedy, Kojima Productions, SUMO Digital, FireSprite, IO Interactive, Bungie and many more of their former/current partners doesn't seem to be interested in getting acquired, so I wouldn't expect any of them to be bought by Sony in the near future.
 

Perrott

Gold Member
Insomniac cost 250 million...Remedy isn’t 500M dude..
Unlike Insomniac, Remedy is not privately owned and they own a couple of IPs (Alan Wake, Control). On top of that, they have a ton of projects in the works and a fairly big staff count.

So yeah, those things mean that we are looking at a 500M+ studio.
 

Bryank75

Banned
I think the key thing is to bear in mind is that in real-world terms infrastructure just means distribution channel. Who actually owns the datacentres is irrelevent to consumers, its how that infrastructure is presented and what products and services it offers individually and as bundles.

So you sign up for Prime shipping on Amazon, they toss in Prime Music and Video for free. And while they are at it they present a range of other subscription service some of which are offered by third-parties, but plenty of them they own also. Its about locking people into their ecosystem.

If you aren't part of such conglomerates, where do you stand? Are you a featured product, or just one amongst many? Big difference because if you're "inside" you are going to get a lot more visibility and as a result more income. Oh, and of course the infrastructure holder can always elect not to allow you in anyway if they think its in their interests, like what Apple did to MS over XCloud.

Point being that just because you have a platform agnostic portal, it doesn't follow that you will be able to install that anywhere. Apple denies MS a kiosk app, and sidelines it onto a web-page suppressing take-up. The only way around this really is to offer a service with so much demand that not carrying it is worse for business than being denied a satisfactory cut of the revenue.

That's the subtle subtext of "Netflix for gaming". A service too big to ignore regardless of who's platform is hosting it and what competing services they offer.
Streaming is a load of bollox, it's not the future. I dunno why you're even bothering to talk about it. It's a failure from top to bottom.

Do you think that I will want to say to my son at Christmas 'Oh, I paid your streaming bill for the next year' or do I want to see them open a new Nintendo or PlayStation console... and their face light up in excitement?

If you think streaming is the future then you don't even know what gaming is about cause you have disregarded one of the best memories of being a gamer.
 
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